'I hardly recognised you,' he said, pointing at her hair, which tumbled over her shoulders in chocolate-brown ringlets. 'Is it a wig?'
'No.' She smiled and bent her head so that he could see the half- centimetre plastic solders fixing the mass of extensions to her own short hair. 'It's still cheating, but it looks better.'
It was as if the smile had got stuck on her face. It made him feel embarrassed. Caroline was his mother's ally. Even if she had been a natural, if not necessarily pleasant, part of his everyday life for some time now, there was no affinity between them. On the contrary: he had clearly felt himself to be outside the little group with his dead sister at its centre. None of them mentioned the reason for this, despite the fact that it was living and breathing under their roof. Solveig had always believed he could have prevented Maya's death. The only reason she chose not to articulate her accusations was because she knew it was unnecessary. He had not been slow to accuse himself.
He didn't respond to Caroline's smile - the rules of adolescence still applied as far as he was concerned, and sullenness was the expression he adopted when nothing else came naturally.
She moved her chair closer to the bed and leaned forward. He caught a glimpse of her breasts beneath the low neckline of her blouse. To his surprise he felt the same mixture of excitement, distaste and embarrassment he had felt on the few occasions he had caught sight of Maya's naked body. He didn't need to think for too long before he recognised the scent: she was wearing Maya's perfume.
Caroline frightened him, but he couldn't stop the rage that came bubbling up inside him.
'You're wearing Maya's perfume.'
He stared at her, even though the look she gave him in return made the room spin. Instead of replying she spread her arms over the bedcover with a slight but unmistakable pressure that made his thighs tingle. He gasped for breath but refused to look away.
Slowly, emphasising every syllable, Caroline spoke his name.
'Did you know that on the other side of the world there's an extremely religious tribe who live in complete isolation. Their teenage boys undergo a special ritual in order to become men: they cut their arms and legs and smear themselves with the blood. It has something to do with confessing their sins, like the Christian martyrs. Then the boy has to lie in a cave, which the older women have prepared by burning a particular kind of wood. I can't remember what it's called but I think it's like our juniper and it has a powerful smell. The boy has to lie on a bed of leaves for three days and three nights. Sometimes the boy has cut too deep, and he bleeds to death. This means that the gods have seen his courage and called him to them - they want him straight away. But usually the boy survives and returns to his village after the three days, and the wounds become scars - long dark snakes on his body. The more striking the network of scars, the higher the status the man will have. They are proof of his bravery. And of the fact that he has gained insight into something important. That he has understood and shouldered the burden of his guilt and is ready to devote the rest of his life to atoning for it.'
She leaned towards his face. Sweat broke out on his brow and under his arms. His nostrils caught a whiff of her breath. It smelled sweet and acrid and made him want to pull back and lean closer.
'There's no such tribe, is there?' he said in a thin voice, and her moist lower lip glistened as a smile passed over her face.
He wanted to stand up for himself and tell her what his social studies teacher had said - that revelling in guilt and martyrdom is exclusive to Western religions - but he was unable to get enough air into his lungs; she was too heavy, leaning on his body, and her gaze was too much like fire burning into his eyes, frightening him into silence. Just when he thought he was going to pass out from lack of oxygen, she pulled back, but only after allowing her hands to roam across the sheet. She leaned in again. Her moist lips closed over his thin dry ones, and she sucked his lower lip into her mouth. The pain shot along his spine like a bolt of lightning as she bit him. He exploded in convulsions, his knees drawn up, forming a protective wall around himself and his body with his hands and arms.
Caroline took a step back, her face expressing sympathy and contempt, a kind of tenderness that his tears of embarrassment had evidently aroused within her.
She caressed his wet cheek with her fingertips.
'When you come home you can move back into your own room.'
* * *
Chapter 51
2007
The dog had been winding itself around his legs, making a high- pitched whimpering sound that didn't seem appropriate for the huge Newfoundland. After Sven had fallen over him several times, a well- aimed kick saw to it that the dog quickly put some distance between himself and his irritable master. Sven pushed a pang of guilt to one side. He had other things on his mind.
Under normal circumstances they both enjoyed the slow ritual of feeding the mink. Albert was his third Newfoundland. They didn't usually live into old age, which was the disadvantage of large dogs: their hip joints gave way. Twice he had had to take his dog and his gun round the back of the house. It wasn't much fun, but it was more humane than letting the dog suffer.
Through the window slits he could see from the tops of the fir trees that the wind had died down.
Two figures in identical red padded jackets, both too large, with matching red and blue backpacks, appeared in front of the house. They were waving at something over by the road. Eriksson's ageing Saab pulled up beside them. The next moment they were gone.
Every third day Sven picked up Eriksson's and Kajsa's kids in the morning. He dropped the whole shower of them at the school gate, and picked them up at the same place at three o'clock. Car pooling, it was called. He was rarely in a good mood when it was his turn to play school bus. Usually he just grunted briefly when the kids jumped in the back of the car. The kids were also strangely silent during the journey. Sven's only experience of children was the two he had been landed with as a result of his marriage to Lee, but he still had the idea that kids usually made a racket. Anyway, it didn't matter. He was just glad they were quiet.
It annoyed him that Lee hadn't managed to learn to drive. He had explained to her many, many times, with varying degrees of irritation, that you needed a driving licence when you lived as far from town and the public transport system as they did.
Lee. Food and housework had been the main things on his mind when he realised a few years ago that he needed a woman in his life. Love, of course - he wasn't made of wood, after all - but above all he wanted to be spared the worry about all those jobs at home that were not a man's responsibility. The alternative - employing some kind of home help - cost money he didn't have. And the house had never been so clean. He couldn't take that away from her. She was never difficult about her duties the way Swedish women sometimes were, particularly those who turned to feminism to find the answer to why they were unhappy with themselves and their lives. He'd met their sort. The fact that he had previously chosen to live alone didn't mean he lacked experience of the opposite sex.
No, it wasn't because of social ineptitude that he had contacted the organisation that had found him Lee - after all the forms had been filled in and matched up - nor because he couldn't manage to get himself a Swedish woman. He was not unsavoury in any way. In fact, as the owner of a working business, he was attractive - even if the mink farm mostly ran on subsidies these days, thanks to the bloody animal rights fanatics. It wouldn't have been all that difficult to get some woman from town to paint herself a romantic picture of a country kitchen and a herb garden, working herself up until she would have married the devil himself. But to get hold of a woman who would roll up her sleeves and throw herself into her work without going on about equality and self-fulfilment, that was tricky.
The idea had been maturing for a couple of years, after he had made a fresh start and bought the farm. He had gone for a Thai mostly by chance. And he also went for Lee mostly by chance, if he was completely truthful. The catalogues contained thousa
nds of hopeful women of all ages. He had concentrated on the younger ones, but not the youngest of all: he suspected their eyes were still full of dreams. The slightly older ones, he reasoned, had hopefully already realised in the hard school of life that reality rarely lives up to those dreams. Because what he wanted was a helping hand in the everyday running of the place, not constant discussion from someone who felt sorry for herself or told him what he ought to be doing.
So, in many ways, he was happy with Lee. This was despite the fact that she had kept her children hidden from him right up to the moment the wedding was booked, and they had arranged passports and the trip home. Then, once she had him in her grasp, she had dropped the bombshell about the two fatherless children out in the country, living with her old grandmother.
'Well, they can stay there,' he had said at first, seething with rage, 'or we forget the whole bloody thing.' If there was one thing he couldn't stand it was being deceived or exploited.
She had wept, there in the hotel room. Hurled herself on the threadbare carpet, clung to his legs like a madwoman, screaming so loudly that the hotel owner had come knocking on the door, afraid that someone was being murdered.
He had spent a whole afternoon and evening wandering around in the disgusting tumult and stench of Bangkok. Up and down the streets until the black cloud in front of his eyes slowly faded and was replaced by sober reasoning. He had put a lot of money into this project. Under no circumstances was he going home empty-handed. To start again from the beginning would mean spending another fortune. There was no guarantee he would find another woman who matched his requirements as well in every other respect. Nor could he stand the thought of another round of artificial parties and eternal dates in slightly seedy restaurants. Particularly as one woman was bewilderingly like another in his eyes and the language barrier precluded any form of real communication.
He had returned to the hotel room towards morning, expecting Lee to have packed her bags and left. Admitted her mistake and gone home to Grandma, the kids and the village he didn't know the name of. Or she might have gone back to the agency to see if she could trick some other Westerner into providing her with happiness and financial security. When he slipped his pass card into the door he was prepared for the sight of the far too soft hotel bed, neatly made up with its light brown throw and empty.
Instead, in the light seeping through the tasteless curtains, he saw the contours of her body beneath the sheet. Something that could only be described as gratitude came over him unexpectedly, bringing a lump to his throat. Not love, it was too soon for that. Loyalty was the word that came into his mind as he stood there in the doorway.
And a working marriage was built on loyalty.
They hired a car and drove out to pick up the two children. A boy and a girl, both as quiet as mice, with skinny brown bodies and hair like shining helmets. As he had expected, the house was tiny, poor and damp, and the old woman who was Lee's grandmother served him tea but refused to look him in the eye. When they were finally ready to leave, she took his hands between her wrinkled shaking ones and let the tears flow.
Incomprehensible words came pouring out of her toothless mouth, and he would have liked the woman he had just married to step in and spare his embarrassment. But she stood there, unwilling to save him. He had pulled his hands away uncomfortably, and went to sit in the car while Lee and the children took their leave of the old woman. A gang of nameless individuals had gathered outside the hut. He had felt a strong aversion to them, not because he was so clearly excluded from their circle, but because he was aware of the reproach emanating from their eyes. Sometimes he imagined he could see that same reproach in Lee's eyes.
It annoyed him, the fact that she hadn't learned to drive.
'I'll pay,' he'd said, time and again, 'I pay the car school,' in broken English. For the first few months he had driven her and the kids around as if he had nothing else to do. 'But you have to practise. I'll teach you.'
The resistance when he jokingly nudged her into the driver's seat and took the handbrake off, that had annoyed him. He could see the fear that passed over her face when the engine started, but decided she'd soon get over it. As soon as she learned to manoeuvre the car.
It didn't happen. She really was hopeless when it came to driving. She lacked the ability to do things simultaneously, as if she was completely ignorant of the relationship between cause and effect. As if the car were a creature acting entirely on its own impulses, completely independent of what she did with her hands and feet. Above all she was afraid, and it didn't improve matters when she went into the ditch outside Carlsson's garage. She just let go of the wheel, put her arm over her eyes and screamed.
Carlsson had to pull them out with his tractor. Laughing, of course, but Sven didn't find the situation remotely amusing.
'Everybody can learn to drive,' he had said. It was meant as encouragement, but he could hear the acid in his own voice. 'Sixteen- year-old kids can learn, why can't you?'
That was the only time Lee had ever raised her voice. She had glared at him and said, 'No more drive, understand' When he had opened his mouth to respond, her expression grew fierce. She clamped her teeth together then firmly said once more, 'Understan'?' And that was the end of the matter.
From then on nothing was said when she took the children on the long trek to the nearest bus stop. She hauled bags of shopping along the dusty gravel track, or pushed them on a little cart she had found in the barn. It really had been a miserable sight, the three skinny strangers with their glossy hair, their little red cart bumping over the frost-damaged track, their expressions stoical. He had had to grit his teeth to avoid exploding.
In order to avoid pointed remarks from the neighbours, he had resumed driving Lee to the supermarket twice a week. Even if it did annoy him.
Albert stretched out his curly-haired body and spotty tummy for general admiration on the slope. Sven crouched down to scratch him. The dog gave himself up to pleasure and when Lee opened the back door of the house and walked across the grass to the stand for beating the rugs, he paid her as little attention as he would a fly on the kitchen floor. She was stooping beneath the weight of the big rug from the living room, not much taller than the two children she had just waved off.
Sven was always pleased when he and Lee were alone at home. Not that they talked to each other much, or had sex in the living room or kitchen. Mostly they moved around in parallel, silently engaged in their own activities - Lee indoors and Sven outdoors. But it felt good. They were two adults who knew exactly what had to be done. When they woke up in the morning, they already knew how the day would look.
By this stage he should have grown used to the children. And yet they still made him slightly nervous. Not that they were particularly unpredictable - they were far too well brought up for that, and he had done up the attic for them so that they could go up there to play and keep out of his way. It was more that there was something about their self-control that made him uncomfortable. As if there were thoughts and impulses they had to conceal behind those timid masks. Sometimes he could hear them giggling behind the closed door of their bedroom late at night. At those times he was sure they were laughing at him. On one occasion he had flung the door open with such force that the strong draught had made their fringes fly up in the air, exposing two high brown foreheads. He had just stood there in the doorway, embarrassed. They had met his gaze with their calm, questioning eyes. Diminishing him.
He put the pails on the floor in front of him and forced himself to breathe more slowly. He was a wreck. The only strategy he could employ to tackle his nerves was to convince himself that nothing mattered. And in a way it was true. There was a six-pack of beer right at the bottom of the fridge in the house. He seriously considered not bothering to feed the mink and simply crashing out on the sofa - because it was all going to come out, and if the worst came to the worst, he was going to have to pay.
In the silence a fly banged repeatedly against a filthy window
pane. He felt as if his shoes were stuck fast in the cement, and sweat broke out beneath the brim of his cap. With an enormous effort he lifted the pails. There was another way of looking at it: on the brink of catastrophe, routine was the only thing left to cling to.
The impacts of the carpet beater on the rug echoed off the metal walls like the sound of gunshots. An unpleasant shiver ran down his spine. The noise died away as Lee lowered her arm. She was so short that the beater reached the ground. All at once she looked old, crippled with pain, like the toothless woman she had introduced as her grandmother.
Since he had spoken to his father for the first time in months, the fear had become a constant presence, a gnawing anxiety chewing its way through his nervous system, sometimes turning into ice-cold terror. At the sight of Lee with the carpet beater it leapt up to his Adam's apple, and for a bewildering moment he thought he was going to burst into tears.
She was standing there looking at him, equally lost.
Please God, don't let anything happen to her, he thought suddenly, and his throat constricted even more. And it was only then that he made his decision. There was no turning back. Not if his life was dear to him.
Strangely enough, he had just realised that it was.
* * *
Chapter 52
The offices of his colleagues were empty. However, every single door was open wide and their computers were still on. They would be on overtime by now. Tell followed the sound of voices. An area just off the kitchen served as a staffroom for those who didn't enjoy sitting in the canteen. The doorway was filled by Bärneflod's broad shoulders.
'Nice to see you,' said Beckman, who was perched on the draining board stirring a cup of hot chocolate. Someone had opened a packet of biscuits and put it on the table. Tell suddenly felt the hunger tearing at his stomach; he couldn't remember eating anything since breakfast.
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